Digital documentation of cultural heritage is becoming increasingly commonplace although the tools for capture and processing continue to evolve at a rapid pace. CyArk assists those who work to manage and preserve these sites by providing workshops on our well developed methodology as well as providing exemplar documentation of specific monuments. Our final deliverables include engineering drawings and detailed maps to assist in critical conservation work and active management.

We begin by working with site managers to understand documentation needs and prioritize our fieldwork. Our goal is to create an accurate surface model of the monument using a combination of digital recording technologies. These include LiDAR or laser scanning, a technique that uses lasers to measure the distance to an object and map that location in 3D. Modern instruments are capable of recording millions of points per second creating an accurate surface representation. We also collect high resolution digital imagery from the air and the ground. We systematically image every surface using tripod mounted cameras as well as drones and combine this using a process called photogrammetry that derives metric information for objects within the scene. We combine both the photogrammetry and LiDAR data to create one 3D surface model of the monument that contains both very accurate geometry as well as high quality texture information.

Once we have the 3D surface model we are able to produce a set of derivatives that are useful to site managers in the ongoing management and restoration of monuments. Accurate and up to date as-built data is often a necessary starting point for many activities. These include engineering drawing sets comprised of plans, sections and elevations that provide dimensionally accurate 2D representations that can easily be loaded into many CAD programs or viewed as a PDF. We work with site managers to understand areas of interest and provide drawings of specific monument details. We also provide GIS data at the site scale containing topographic information as well as building footprints where this is helpful to the site.